SAN JOSE -- What do you do after the worst debacle in the history of your franchise?

The Sharks went to the handshake line.

That is part of hockey tradition, whether you win a series, or lose a series, or lose a series in the most disturbing and unpardonable way possible.

In this case, the Sharks were forced to congratulate the Los Angeles Kings for coming back from a three-games-to-none deficit to win a best-of-seven series as the men in teal leaked away every pint of that advantage -- something that had happened just three previous times in the 97-year history of the National Hockey League.

"It's hard to put into words," said Joe Pavelski, the Sharks winger, trying to explain how he felt after his team blew a lead that should not have been blown. "It's really tough."

There is no use piling on the Sharks at this point. They looked sad enough in that handshake line. They looked even sadder in the dressing room when, with no standing to make excuses, none of them tried. They know their reputation as underachievers who lack the killer instinct to ever win a championship.

"I don't usually agree with it," said Patrick Marleau, another Sharks veteran. "But you do something like this ... and it's not easy to take."

The final score Wednesday night was 5-1, burnished by two empty-net goals in the final three minutes that rubbed in the humiliation. It was difficult to remember that early in second period, the Sharks had actually been ahead on the scoreboard with an excellent chance to destroy their demons and move on to the next playoff round.

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That occurred when defenseman Matt Irwin fired a puck past Los Angeles goalie Jonathan Quick to give the Sharks a 1-0 lead just 28 seconds after the first intermission, with the SAP Center crowd in vocal boombox mode and ready to hound the Kings into mental errors. This was the vaunted home-ice advantage that some believed would help decide a Game 7.

On the ice, the Sharks didn't get the memo. The first Kings' goal occurred after a questionable penalty call against Sharks forward Logan Couture for elbowing. His childhood friend, L.A. defenseman Drew Doughty, scored a power-play goal 13 seconds later to tie the game.

A bad break. But the game was still up for grabs. The crowd was still roaring. The roar was sustained through three more Sharks power plays -- none of which yielded goals. And then, with 1:21 left in the period, the Kings victimized the Sharks the same way they had been victimizing the Sharks in all four final games of the series. Los Angeles took advantage of bad defensive positioning or effort by the Sharks to generate an odd-man rush and score.

Specifically in this case, the Kings' Anze Kopitar beat Sharks rookie Matt Nieto down the ice and no one else picked up Kopitar -- so he had plenty of space to flip a backhanded puck past Sharks goalie Antti Niemi. The score was 2-1. It might as well have been 10-1, the way the Kings play defense when they are ahead. Another goal near the start of the third period made the task even more insurmountable.

"We were awful off the rush," said Sharks coach Todd McLellan, in candid disgust after the loss. "We were never able to fix it."

McLellan called the Kings' goals "very defendable" and admitted the series loss was "the low point since I've been here."

He's been on the job for six years -- all of them uniformly good in the regular season (including this one, in which the Sharks finished with the NHL's fifth-best record) and almost always a busted-balloon of expectations in the postseason.

Of course, the Kings realized that, as well. After they won Game 5 here Saturday, you had the feeling the Los Angeles players were almost expecting a collapse in Game 6 and Game 7.

"We kind of sensed going into tonight's game they were going to be a little nervous," Doughty said, "that they were going to kind of see what was going to happen. I felt they played a good game. But the third period was huge for us."

Only the third period? What about all the periods after the Sharks' Game 3 victory that put them in prime position to clinch?

Full marks to the Kings, who persevered and refused to believe they were finished. But the Sharks, whose offensive stars fizzled in the final three games, were equal contributors to the result. And so the franchise must endure another summer of soul searching after a disappointing playoff thud.